Why you should be terrified. Plus: Epstein, Michael Wolff, Semion Mogilevich and Bill Barr

With each passing hour, my fear grows. The Big Smear is coming, and it may change American politics forever.

The irregularities of Epstein's death are starting to put paranoid thoughts into the minds of even the staunchest anti-conspiracists.

The two staff members who were guarding the jail unit where Jeffrey Epstein apparently killed himself fell asleep and failed to check on him for about three hours, then falsified records to cover up their mistake, according to several law enforcement and prison officials with knowledge of the matter.

Fell asleep? Seems pretty unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if the bank accounts of those guards grew unaccountably fatter in recent weeks. I also wouldn't be surprised if the payoffs were channeled though a financial entity that can be plausibly linked to the Clinton Foundation.

I'm not buying the claim that Epstein just happened to have no roommate in that cell, even though he damned well ought to have had one. And then there's this under-discussed paragraph from the August 11 WP:

People close to Epstein, noting that he seemed recently to be in good spirits, were surprised by reports of suicide, according to one person familiar with their discussions Saturday, and expressed concern about the possibility of foul play. His attorneys are seeking to learn from authorities how Epstein’s body was found and how such an incident could have happened, this person said.

We still don't know precisely what Epstein said about the first episode -- the one that left marks on his neck.

You always know when a right-wing op is underway: The big tell is uniformity. All of the rightist news sources are marching in lockstep, often using the exact same words. Even Sputnik has gotten in on the act. If this thing had any chance of hurting Trump, Sputnik would look away.

Tear yourself away from your media comfort zone and check out what the deplorables are saying. They know that this investigation is under total Trumpian control. They know that the Big Smear is about to hit the Clintons -- and, by extension, all Democrats.

The perps are in charge of the investigation.

Even the DU crowd and the Kos Kids are starting to realize the fix we're in. Nevertheless, when the Big Smear hits, the Dems will toss Bill Clinton under the bus with a rapidity best measured in nanoseconds. (Sanctimonious feminist scolds like Virginia Heffernan are probably polishing their "bus toss" pieces already.) That move won't help Dems in 2020, but they'll do it anyways. 

This may be the most ominous article I've ever seen:

FBI agents seized computers from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s home in the Virgin Islands during a raid of the private island owned by the late accused sex trafficker.

The footage shows that at least two computer desktops and an Apple computer were packaged and marked to be taken away from Little St. James island as part of the FBI probe.

Obviously, anyone could have had access to those computers before the FBI showed up. Hell, hackers probably gained control of those systems years ago. Don't be surprised if you see "photos" of Bill Clinton with his arm around one of Epstein's Lolitas. Photoshop is a marvelous thing.

Michael Wolff is one of Epstein's more noteworthy friends.  Most people don't know that they formed a connection more than a decade ago.

I don't entirely trust Wolff, but I must admit that I've gone over much of Siege twice. It's the most compulsively readable political work produced in the Trump era. When it comes to lurid details, vivid characterizations and hilarious bitchiness, Wolff is in a league with Suetonius. Is Siege completely accurate? I don't know. I also don't know if Suetonius was completely accurate; scholars debate the point. But people still read him, two thousand years later.

I do trust Wolff when he passes on information from Steve Bannon. If Wolff had misquoted him, Bannon would have complained. As for the other material...

Well, it occurs to me one of Wolff's sources may have been Jeff Epstein.

Much of Siege derives from a series of phone conversations that Trump has had with various friends, including Bannon. Wolff quotes Der Donald at length, indicating that these friends have recorded Trump's late-night tirades. (Wouldn't you?) Thus, we must ask an obvious question: Who, among Donald Trump's circle of associations, would also talk to Michael Wolff?

If you want to research the Wolff-Epstein link, your journey will start with this New York Magazine piece from 2007.

Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff met him in the Internet bubble, in the late nineties, when Epstein invited him and a group of scientists and media types to fly to a conference on the West Coast in his beautiful 727.

“It was all a little giddy,” Wolff says. “There’s a little food out, lovely hors d’oeuvre. And then after fifteen to twenty minutes, Jeffrey arrives. This guy comes onboard: He was my age, late forties, and he had a kind of Ralph Lauren look to him, a good-looking Jewish guy in casual attire. Jeans, no socks, loafers, a button-down shirt, shirttails out. And he was followed onto the plane by—how shall I say this?—by three teenage girls not his daughters. Not adolescent girls. These are young, 18, 19, 20, who knows? They were model-like. They towered over Jeffrey. And they immediately began serving things. You didn’t know what to make of this … Who is this man with this very large airplane and these very tall girls?”

Soon after, Wolff was invited to tea at the house on East 71st Street. He understood that there was a purpose to the cultivation. Epstein was shifting his view to media, in his Über-way...

And now I direct your attention to this very recent piece by James B. Stewart in the New York Times. Keep in mind that I don't trust Stewart, who, back in the day, wrote a crap book about Whitewater called Blood Sport.

In the passage that follows, the man offering the dinner invitation is Epstein. The year is 2018.

A few weeks after that, he asked me to join him for dinner with the author Michael Wolff and Donald J. Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon. I declined. (I don’t know if these dinners actually happened. Mr. Bannon has said he didn’t attend. Mr. Wolff and a spokeswoman for Mr. Allen didn’t respond to requests for comment on Monday.)

In this same time period, Wolff was writing Siege. Based on this passage, we have excellent reason to believe that Epstein and Bannon were associates throughout this period. We also have excellent reason to believe that Wolff met with Epstein while writing Siege. Thus, it's not unreasonable to suspect that Epstein was one of Wolff's sources, and that Trump was conferring with Epstein late at night.

Of course, Trump now claims that he hasn't spoken to Epstein in fifteen years. Believe that if you will. Trump also said that he didn't have sex with Stormy Daniels and had nothing to do with the pay-off. And Alan Dershowitz now denies that he and Epstein were close.

Incidentally, Jeffrey Epstein asked James B. Stewart to write his authorized biography. Stewart declined. I wonder if Stewart's vile little Whitewater book is what brought him to Epstein's attention? Was the "Get Clinton" plot in operation even then?

Stewart was wise to decline the invitation. In our current nationwide re-enactment of The Crucible, anyone who has ever had any relationship with Epstein is now considered a pedophile-by-association. Apparently, pedophilia is catching, like cooties.

(A scientific side note: Technically, Epstein was a hebephile, not a pedophile. And if you think that the previous sentence was meant to be exculpatory, congratulations! You're playing your role in The Crucible with remarkable verve.)

The studiously-ignored Mogilevich connection. Despite the millions of words devoted to the Epstein case, few care to discuss the fact that his "entourage" often included young women from Eastern Europe. From an earlier Cannonfire piece:

The evidence is clear that Epstein was involved not just in moving girls across state lines but in international trafficking. See here:

The private Caribbean island, called Little St James, allegedly became the scene of riotous orgies involving under-aged girls flown in from eastern Europe.

Finally, I draw your attention to this important piece by Vicki Ward:

Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women—lots of them, mostly young. Model types have been heard saying they are full of gratitude to Epstein for flying them around, and he is a familiar face to many of the Victoria’s Secret girls. One young woman recalls being summoned by Ghislaine Maxwell to a concert at Epstein’s town house, where the women seemed to outnumber the men by far. “These were not women you’d see at Upper East Side dinners,” the woman recalls. “Many seemed foreign and dressed a little bizarrely.” This same guest also attended a cocktail party thrown by Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was filled, she says, with young Russian models. “Some of the guests were horrified,” the woman says.

As I've noted on more than one occasion, when it comes to the trafficking of underaged women from eastern Europe, the name of one crime lord stands out: Semion Mogelivich. He controls that racket -- or perhaps I should say "controlled" in the past tense, since he's getting on in years. He's pretty much untouchable. And he can be connected to Trump through various associates, primarily Felix Sater.

What I did not know at the time -- but damned well should have -- is Ghislaine Maxwell's connection to Mogilevich. Following this research trail is not easy, since one must deal with Gordon Thomas' book about Robert Maxwell. Thomas wrote the passage to your left.

The problem: Thomas relied on a very strange Israeli spook named Ari Ben-Menashe. We've talked about him before in these pages. Whenever he shows up, things inevitably get weird.

Here's an interesting Twitter thread...

What does Jeffrey Epstein have to do w/ Semion Mogilevich - the RU/Ukranian mafia boss whose men lived in Trump Tower, gambled at Taj Mahal, & used @realDonaldTrump as his global money-launderer? Well, for starts, Epstein's madame, Ghislaine Maxwell, was in Semion's crime family.

Another interesting tweet:

Jeffrey #Epstein’s alleged madame—Ghislaine Maxwell—is the daughter of deceased (murdered) publishing tycoon, Robert Maxwell, who was tight with Ukrainian/#Russian🇷🇺mafia don, Semion Mogilevich.😳

Epstein wired the bedrooms in his house for VIDEO. Guess who’s got the tapes⁉️

That should be enough to get you started.

Bill Barr. Not enough people are talking about Barr's links to Epstein. Writer Greg Olear has offered a succinct tweet...

Epstein was hired at Dalton by Donald Barr, weirdo father of Bill Barr. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Even then, Epstein was likely trying to get leverage over people.

Olear points to a tweet from another writer, who notes that Barr's law firm also represented Epstein.

The first thing you have to understand about Barr is that evidence indicates that he was always a CIA lawyer, even when working (ostensibly) in the private sector. Working in this capacity, he helped to set up the deal which allowed the notorious BCCI to take over a major American bank called First American. Everyone knows that the Agency made use of BCCI during this period.

People forget that Epstein apparently worked for American intelligence.

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta.

So: Epstein has a connection to Spookworld. Bannon connects to Spookworld through Cambridge Analytica. Barr is spookier than the Winchester Mystery House. Spooky Bannon was getting together with Spooky Epstein in 2018. And now Spooky Barr is in charge of the Epstein investigation.

Interesting, no?